Earlier this month the Supreme Court of Virginia, in Jaynes v Virginia [PDF], struck down that state’s anti-spam legislation as unconstitutional, because it was ‘over-broad’. Its rules prohibiting misuse or misrepresentation of IP addresses applied not only to commercial but to all messages, including political or religious ones. This was an impermissible infringement on free speech, said the court. As a result, the commercial spammer was acquitted who had been convicted at trial and whose conviction had been upheld at the first level of appeal.

Should the Canadian anti-spam law restrict itself to commercial messages? Would it be appropriate to put on spam the same subject-matter limits that are on telemarketing under the CRTC’s Do-Not-Call rules?

Most nteresting is that Senator Oliver (A Conservative) introduced this legislation three times when there was a Liberal government in the house, then when there was a Conservative government in the house, anti-spam legislation was introduced by Senator Goldstein, a Liberal.

I am personally not as concerned with the language of the bill, but rather the ridiculously slow pace of legislation to meet the current needs of the people.

But those private Senators’ bills were pretty namby-pamby and symbolic things. They didn’t reflect the recommendations of the Anti-Spam Task Force, so far as I know – the most credible Canadian analysis of our problem. It is unlikely that the bills were worth passing. Introducing the same bill several times does not make its merits increase.

The language of the bill does make some difference as to whether it should be passed or not, surely.